The government has joined the community of nations that are protesting against the U.S. government’s implementation of the Helms-Burton Law this next August. The Dominican Republic signed the OAS resolution for its. General Assembly on 3 June that requests the Interamerican Judicial Committee to determine if the Helms-Burton Law complies with international law. Some political analysts though, state that while the Clinton administration favors re-establishing trade relations with Cuba, the U.S. President signed the Helms-Burton Law to please the Cuban-American constituency in Miami, and is waiting for the November election to open U.S. trade with Cuba.
The Dominican Minister of Foreign Affairs, Caonabo Javier Castillo, said in his speech at the OAS General Assembly, held in Panama on 3 June, that the Helms-Burton Law contradicts U.S. talk of regional integration, global markets and free trade and the present general trend of interdependence among nations. He criticized what he called “the endeavor of the U.S. to isolate from the world a small nation from which it is separated by political and ideological differences.”
“We would have to gauge what is the best manner to encourage the introduction of the democratic changes that most of us would like to see come to Cuba, be it the isolationism maintained during three and a half decades which has only achieved stagnation and make the different positions more rigid, or by the way of free exchange of goods and ideas. In this scenario, the Helms-Burton Law and its sequel of prejudices against Latin American and European investors comes to be a step back from globalization, and the political, economic, social and cultural integrationist aspirations of the peoples of the Americas,” said Javier Castillo.